Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 241
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
Gabe’s phone rings, and Frog picks it up for him. “It’s Millie Kay.” His girlfriend. She’s also the surrogate who birthed Cassidy, my baby niece.
“Tell MK I’ll call her back,” Gabe says, focused on driving. “And that she looked cute yesterday in that red dress, and to have a good day, and I’ll catch up with her at dinner, and to decide between steak or pizza—”
“Would you like to hire a receptionist?” Frog asks before answering. “Hi, MK. Gabe says he’ll call you back.” Frog repeats everything Gabe instructed and then some. She’s on the phone with Millie Kay for another three minutes, hyping up Gabe’s cooking skills. “Go for the steak. It really has no business being that good.”
Once she’s off the phone, Frog speaks quietly in comms. Then her attention returns to me. “How are you and Wonder Bread?”
Instantly, I picture myself intertwined with Donnelly in sweaty sheets from this morning. It’s been over a week since he took my pseudo-virginity, and he’s been inside me every night and morning since then. Sex has been a natural, blissful piece of our relationship, like it’s the ingredient that makes bread rise or the secret that makes cherries grow plentifully from a tree.
I smile wide and say, “Fruitful.”
She gasps. “You’re pregnant.”
Gabe’s neck snaps but he’s careful to maintain eye-contact on the road.
“No wait,” Frog crinkles her nose. “That doesn’t make sense. You two are taking things slow.” I did mention that Donnelly and I were in a slo-mo zone together since my amnesia.
I could be vague, but I’m still trying to share more. “We had sex, actually,” I say into a giant grin.
Frog lets out a louder gasp while Gabe puts both hands on the wheel like my news might flip the vehicle over.
“You are pregnant.”
“Nope. We’ve just had an abundance of extraordinary sex.”
She lets out a soft squeal. “I knew this would eventually happen. But it’s still shocking. Like knowing the ending of Titanic but crying anyway. Only this happens to be a happy shock and not a grab-a-box-of-tissues shocker.”
I don’t tell her how Donnelly and I cried beforehand. How we went on a magical date to Wawa afterward. How the night became one for the storybooks of our love.
This—I could share this, I want to share this with my friend, but how do I verbally express the sheer depth of those soulful moments that are living and breathing inside my heart? It’s not as easy to speak about love, as it is to write it.
Once we’re parked and walking across campus, Frog mentions her virginity status and asks me if I think it’s worth it to wait for the right one.
She’s not making eye contact; her vigilance is on college students locking their bikes and others powerwalking to the library. So I take a second to respond.
Is it worth it to wait?
Even though I did lose my virginity the first time around to someone else, I can’t remember it. I’m glad that Donnelly feels like my first now. And maybe that won’t last forever. I might get memories back of the other sexual encounters before him, and I’ll have to be okay with that.
But OG Luna is me. Those three years paved the way for me to be where I am today. Had I not been with other guys first, would I even have had the courage to be with Donnelly at all? Would I have even woken up in that hospital and had this connection with him now?
I’ll never really know.
But I believe every timeline matters. The one I forgot and the one I remember. And the merging of the two. They all make up who I am.
So I tell Frog, “The right one will be with you whether you’re a virgin or not. And if he’s the right one—I’d like to believe he’ll make it feel like there was no one ever before him.”
Gabe stands outside the door of Television and New Media. He doesn’t want the presence of a new “student” to be a distraction. So only Frog and I are seated at the U-style conference table.
I do what I do every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Open my laptop and ignore the hell out of the three girls sitting across from me. Stassi, Beverly, and Jeffra combined have morphed into some Bermuda Triangle that vanishes your self-esteem if you make direct eye contact. Frog calls them hobgoblins. She also covered her Stanley in Studio 9 stickers the day after Stassi complimented it.
I’m popping up my notes app when Frog stiffens beside me. Uh-oh. My mind shoots to the Bermuda Triangle. What are they doing? I don’t hear any hissing—a good sign.
Frog’s brows knot. Her shoulder bumps mine. “Luna,” she whispers, leaning in. “I’m just learning this now, so don’t be upset—” She touches her earpiece.
I try not to freak out. Frog is listening intently to comms. Making the most dramatic pause ever.